Denamic said:
What the hell is Konami even doing? It's like the entire company is having some sort of meltdown.
And Youtube actually reviewing copyright claims? What is even going on?!
Well with Konami I can guess.
It's been all speculation for a while now, but apparently the idea of a huge video game crash coming has gone from tirades on the internet to a sort of board room boogie man where you have a lot of fat cats seeing how the system can't sustain itself but being unwilling to do anything to change things. Apparently some have become convinced this is going to happen really soon now, and the video game bubble is going to burst and people will have to wait for it to reform. This is why a lot of companies are restricting and/or moving on to other areas of game development which they hope will weather the storm when "real" video games go atomic. It's about grabbing as much money as possible and getting out of the bubble before it collapses.
Konami is a company that doesn't just develop video games, indeed I suspect Super Bunny Hop might have hit a nerve and stumbled close to the truth when he pointed out what other businesses they are involved in. Their video games make the most profit compared to their other endeavors, but if they think it's going to collapse reshuffling their resources to focus on other things makes sense. One thing Konami is big into is gambling machines, and right now there is a big push to legalize a lot more gambling in Japan, potentially making gambling machines domestically in such a case, or even the possibility of opening their own casinos, can eclipse what they have been making off of video games. If they are concerned about their current investment in video games... well... that's an option for them, and even if the video gaming bubble doesn't collapse it won't matter anyway if they are riding the wave of a Japanese gambling surge.
Konami seems to be (as SBH pointed out) moving from a studio based operation to a headquarters based operation, where their people are no longer going to be assigned to specific products. Digital gambling machines use all kinds of graphics and sound assets so of course having all their people in a pool to be used for that as well as gaming on their way out makes a degree of sense in terms of restricting.
Given some of the speculation I've run into, it seems fairly likely to me that the "Metal Gear" project is being finished up on because Konami already has a lot of money invested in the project, and at this point just cancelling it would cost them a ton of money so they might as well see through the release and get some of it back. "Silent Hills" on the other hand seems like it might have been a problem production, I mean the game was supposed to be out this year if I remember, and under development before it's announcement, yet from the way it seems nobody was actually working on the product, nothing about Mr. Del Toro working on it, or Mr. Reedus going in to record voice or be digitized, or whatever else. I get the impression that other than P.T. which might not have even had anything to do with the game itself, very little had actually been developed in regards to this project and it was all pre-production and planning stuff. Had the project been further along like you'd expect before something like P.T. it might have been okay, but as things stand your probably looking at 2-3 years worth of development, and if that bubble bursts in that time like Konami might be scared of they could lose big, not to mention that the millions put aside for that project are probably in demand for Konami's other, non-video game related projects. I get the impression Konami is probably lobbying for these pro-gambling laws, and that costs money.
Nothing reliable, but that's my guess as to what's going on. Kojima's position is probably one where he is realizing CEOs are never anyone's friend, and yeah he made Konami a lot of money, but he no longer fits what the company wants so it doesn't matter what he's done, they want him gone. One of those cases where they tell someone they are an irreplaceable and valuable asset until such a time that the company goes chasing the next shiny thing or gets a little scared about something, and then it's a quick trip behind the shed with Old Yeller and a shotgun.
